New Game of Thrones Spin-Offs Don't Include Dunk & Egg Prequel

Earlier this month, HBO confirmed that they are developing four Game of Thrones spin-offs, with the network bringing in writers Max Borenstein (Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Golden Circle), Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L.A. Confidential) and Carly Wray (Mad Man) to work on these shows. Unfortunately, the network wouldn't say more about what these shows will focus on, but George R.R. Martin took to his blog this weekend, and while he wouldn't say what these shows were about, he did confirm that these shows will not follow the Dunk & Egg prequel story. Here's what he had to say below.

"I can't tell you what the shows will be about (well, I could, but I won't), but I will tell you a couple of things they WON'T be. Which will disappoint some of you, sure, but better to do that now than later, I think. We're not doing Dunk & Egg. Eventually, sure, I'd love that, and so would many of you. But I've only written and published three novellas to date, and there are at least seven or eight or ten more I want to write. We all know how slow I am, and how fast a television show can move. I don't want to repeat what happened with Game of Thrones itself, where the show gets ahead of the books. When the day comes that I've finished telling all my tales of Dunk & Egg, then we'll do a tv show about them... but that day is still a long ways off."

George R.R. Martin has mentioned the possibility of using his Dunk & Egg stores, which are set 100 years before the events in the Game of Thrones books and TV show, but now it seems that he wants to wait until his entire series of novellas is done. When that will happen is anybody's guess, but the three novellas, The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight, all follow the characters Dunk & Egg, which is much lighter in tone and ties into Westeros history. The author also revealed there is another story that won't be explored by these shows, Robert Baratheon's rebellion. Here's what he had to say in another excerpt from his Live Journal post.

"We're not doing Robert's Rebellion either. I know thousands of you want that, I know there's a petition... but by the time I finish writing A Song of Fire and Ice, you will know every important thing that happened in Robert's Rebellion. There would be no surprises or revelations left in such a show, just the acting out of conflicts whose resolutions you already know. That's not a story I want to tell just now; it would feel too much like a twice-told tale."

The author also revealed that there will now be a fifth Game of Thrones prequel series, with a new writer coming aboard that he would not identify. He also clarified the original report that said the author was only working with two of the writers, revealing that he's actually working with all of them, and while there are now orders for five pilot scripts, it still is unclear how many of these will be shot as pilots, and how many of those will get series orders. As for the flagship series, Game of Thrones returns with its penultimate seventh season on Sunday, July 16, which will be comprised of seven episodes, with the eight and final season, which spans six episodes, debuting at some point in 2018.